Frankenstein Archives

Frankenstein (2025)

Posted on November 18, 2025November 18, 2025 by fenrisfil

Frankenstein is the movie that Guillermo Del Toro was born to make. Anyone familiar with his style and body of work will know this instinctively. The idea of the visionary director taking a crack at the ultimate tragic monster story is mouth watering. Guillermo is well aware of this himself and so was apparently hesitant to pull the trigger on his dream project. Fortunately for us, he took the risk. Del Toro provides his own screenplay adaptation of Mary Shelly’s classic. Dan Laustsen provides cinematography and Alexandre Desplat provides the score. Oscar Isaac plays Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi his monster. The supporting cast features a lot of great talent, including Mia Goth, Charles Dance, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley, Felix Kammerer and Lars Mikkelsen.

The passion of Monsters

The movie lands in two key ways: The fantastic visuals and how engaging the two primary characters are (Frankenstein and his monster). That’s not to say there aren’t issues, but these are somewhat minor. Specifically the length and what the film does with that time. By far the best part of the film is “The Monster’s story” which is the final hour of the film. I wouldn’t change a thing in this section. But the first hour and a half is where the movie drags a little and where the focus could have been better. We see a Young Victor’s upbringing and arrangement with arms dealer Henrich that funds his research. While none of it is without purpose or merit, I can’t help but feel we didn’t need quite as much of it.

On the other hand, I could do with a bit more of Mia Goth’s Elizabeth. She is a truly pivotal character. Despite being engaged to Victor’s brother, both he and his monster fall in love with her. Yet, she didn’t feel as real as either of them. The result is everyone’s obsession with her feels artificial. I would have preferred less time spent on Frankenstein’s benefactor and father and more on Elizabeth. This could probably have been achieved just by editing out some of the clutter. That said it’s not a deal breaker. Cutting screen time from actors of Charles Dance and Christoph Waltz caliber, is admittedly a tough ask!

The True Visionary

It comes as no surprise that Del Toro provides has provided Frankentein with stunning and beautifully Gothic visuals. This is his raison d’être. This is the one thing you can pretty solidly rely on from the director and the reason he is referred to as a “Visionary”. The cinematography, the sets, the costumes and the Monster’s design itself are all works of art. There are references to the Universal classics but at the same time the style is very much Del Toro. Full of his favored blacks and reds, with ultra wide angle lenses and every shot full of Gothic majesty. It is at this point exactly what you expect from a Del Toro movie. For many it is the reason they watch them. That said, where the director was forced to use CGI here, the visuals suffer a little. The positives outweigh the negatives, but on occasions things feel a little too unreal.

For me, the story is often the weaker part of a Del Toro movie, but here he makes two key decisions that bring everything together. One is the focus on humanizing the Monster (Not a new take, but done to very well). The second is updating the setting by about 50 years. That is something Mary Shelly didn’t have the option of. She wrote the novel in 1818 and set it around the 1790’s. The classic Universal 1930’s adaptation was set around the turn of the 20th century. Del Toro meanwhile sets his film in the 1850’s during the Crimean War, a war that was still decades in the future when the novel was written. Del Toro picked the perfect setting. A feat he also achieved in Pinocchio by moving the setting about the same amount (50 years) setting it during the rise of Mussolini.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an excellent movie. Not perfect, but very few films are. It is probably Del Toro’s best work. The visuals are stunning and the character story is compelling. Frankenstein always was a compelling story, but not every version really drives home the emotion of the story. This does and in my view it is the best version of the tale. Previously I’d have given that to Bride of Frankenstein, which is effectively the “Monster’s Story” part of this film. The two parts of this movie do actually play out largely like watching the original two Universal movies. I can’t help but feel that is deliberate. I highly recommend this movie, it just about gets a super rare 8/10 from me.

Frankenhooker (1990)

Posted on October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by fenrisfil

Today’s review is the cult horror comedy “Frankenhooker” from 1990. I’m a fan of the genre, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to this one. This is directed by Frank Henenlotter, who also co-wrote it along with Robert Martin. Henenlotter is most famous for another cult horror comedy, “Basket Case” from 1982. Music is by Joe Renzetti, who previously scored “Child’s Play”, “Dead and Burried” and even John Carpenter’s “Elvis” movie (The non-Elvis parts, obviously). This was made for $2.5m ($6m by today’s money), making it a low-mid budget horror. Basically this is a deliberate B-Movie, an intentionally B-like movie, but made to a slightly higher budget.

The movie stars James Lorinz as young mad scientist “Jeffrey Franken” and Patty Mullen as “Elizabeth Shelley” aka “Frankenhooker”. I think you can probably get the references in the names. A classic romance story. Boy meets girl. They get engaged. Girl accidentally kills herself with a remote controlled lawn mower. Boy keeps girls head in a freezer. Boy makes a load of hookers explode with super-crack and then re-animates girl using their body parts. Girl becomes partially possessed by her hooker body parts and runs off looking for Johns. Boy chases after girl. Will they end up happily ever after?

Piece by Piece

Well, this is certainly a silly movie, but I can’t say it is particularly hilarious. It is amusing in places though and in some cases possibly unintentionally. Elizabeth is meant to be overweight, apparently from a pretzels addiction. But the actress clearly isn’t overweight and so they basically got her to fully do up her outfit and stuff it with what I assume is clothes or paper. It looked ridiculous. That made me laugh more than the rest of the film, but I have no idea if that was intentional or they genuinely thought it would work. There actually wasn’t much need for her to be overweight either since she’s reduced to just a head shortly after the intro.

This is one of those movies that have nothing to it outside of the concept and what you see in the trailer. I wasn’t sure quite how much to cover with the synopsis. What I described is the entire first two acts, but that’s the basic premise and it’s all in the trailer. The movie takes a long time to get around to re-animating Elizabeth. It’s a typical horror built around a gimmicky concept, Quite often with these movies they don’t know what to do after the concept is activated (At least within their budget), so they pad out the build up instead. Still, thanks to James Lorinz wacky portrayal of Jeffrey Franken, the build up is just as amusing as the the actual Frankenhooker rampage.

Conclusion

Once we finally have our Frankenhooker loose in the red light district, the humor is about what you’d expect. It’s a brief pay off for the build up. I do have to give it to Patty Mullen for her portrayal of the monstrous prostitute. She gets a little repetitive but it’s an amusing routine. It is Lorinz that has to hold the film together though and he does a good job. What lets the film down is it seems to run out of ideas just as it gets going. I also got a little bored of people blowing up. It’s sort of one trick comedy gore here.

Ultimately this is a moderately amusing horror comedy that comes across a bit dated in both plot and execution. I enjoy horror comedies more than most, so this is a disappointment. It’s not a total disaster though and I can see why it achieved cult status. If you enjoy comedy horrors based just on ridiculousness then this could be for you. For me though I can only give it a strong 5/10. Best viewed with lots of beer.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by fenrisfil

For tonight’s review it’s time to watch the oldest film on my October Challenge list, A film that I’ve owned on DVD for decades and a long overdue watching! This is “Bride of Frankenstein” from 1935. The sequel to Universal’s groundbreaking “Frankenstein” (1931), the movie sees the return of Karloff the role that made him famous (Going from his non-credit as “?” in the original to simply “Karloff” here and in many future roles). Colin Clive returns in his role as Henry (Renamed from the novel’s “Victor”) Frankenstein and James Whale returns as director. Dwight Frye also returns though in a new (but basically the same) henchman role. They are joined by Ernest Thesiger and Peters Heggie joining the main cast for this sequel.

Despite being a sequel to the original movie, this is also an adaptation of Mary Shelly’s legendary novel “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus” and focuses on elements of the story the original simply didn’t have the time to utilize. Specifically it deals with two sections on the novel. First of all The Monster’s infatuation with a poor family in a nearby village and brief friendship with the families blind father. Secondly and more importantly (As it gives the film it’s title) it deals with Frankenstein’s abandoned attempt to create a bride for the Monster. In the novel this second creature never sees life, but here of course it will.

Gods and Monsters.

Much like with the original, the new monster is credited only credited as “?” in the credits, but is actually played (Very briefly) by Elsa Lanchester. Elsa does get a credit though since she also plays Mary Shelly in a completely unnecessary lead in that portrays her telling the tale. After the lead in, we basically pick up exactly where the first movie left off and get to see that both Frankenstein and his Monster survived. While the former is recovering from injuries and regretting his attempt to play God he is visited by the sinister “Doctor Pretorius” (Thesiger), who informs him that he too has created and life and wants them to work together. Out of curiosity he agrees to see Pretorius’ creations.

This is where we reach the worst and most ridiculous part of the movie as Doctor Pretorius displays his collection of Homunculi, that is doll size humans created through alchemy. It’s worth noting there’s a lot of examples of such little creatures in old school horror and it’s frankly always very silly. Many years later Army of Darkness probably had the best take on this with the Mini-Ash monsters but even that was designed to be funny. Here it is painfully out of place but fortunately not referenced again in the movie. Prestorius’ main aim is to create a mate for Frankenstein’s Monster.

She’s Alive! Alive!

While all this is going on the Monster himself has escaped the mob and is hiding in a local village where he stumbles upon a blind man playing a violin. Attracted by the music he enters the house and is greeting welcomingly by the man. The two strike up a friendship and over an unclear amount of time he is able to teach the Monster a few words. But some local travelers looking for directions recognize the monster and try to attack it. In the melee the old man’s house is burned down. All parties survive and the Monster flees to a nearby crypt where he follows Prestorius’ goons and discovers the plan to create him a mate. He assists in pressuring Doctor Frankenstein into working on the project by kidnapping his fiance.

Finally we have our tragic conclusion, which I’ll avoid spoilers for, but you can probably guess how it goes. Most of the strength of this story comes from the quality of the original novel, with this sequel having picked two of the most emotionally relevant elements of the novel to focus on. Karloff does do an excellent job as the Monster, despite objecting to having to speak. He gets considerably more screen time than he did in the original here and makes the most of it. We also have a number of fantastic visuals, building on those provided with the original.

The Difference A Few Years Can Make.

One notable difference between here and the original movie is the addition of a unique thematic score by Franz Waxman. Back in 1931 when Frankenstein came out, it was still the early days for the “Talkies” and most films had very little music, using mostly pre-existing stock music or diegetic music (i.e. performed by people in the fictional world and heard by the characters). When you watch Frankenstein these days, the lack of music in the vast majority of the film is painfully noticeable.

Here, this is not a problem and this is possibly one of the most ground break scores of it’s era. This is exactly what you would expect from a Horror score, powerful, discordant and containing distinct themes for the Monster, the Bride and the evil Doctor Prestorius. The end result here is that this film has aged much better than the original. Where the original does have an advantage though is being pre-code it could be a bit more risky with what it depicts, while here they have to play a little safer, but I don’t feel this impacted it much.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great movie for it’s time and has aged better than several other Universal classics (Notably the most famous ones, “Frankenstein” and “Dracula”). The human aspects of the story come through substantially better than in the original and it’s good to see a sequel return to the source for inspiration instead of going off on a wildly tangential path. It is unavoidably dated in some aspects though due to it’s age. The prologue and the Homunculi scenes both take from the movie to some degree instead of add to it (More so with the latter) and with such a short movie (As these Universal classics tended to be) you really don’t need to be wasting time with such nonsense.

Ultimately I always rate movies for how they work today and not in the time (Since my goal is to inform potential viewers not make a historic statement) that lowers my score somewhat. In the 30’s, this may well have been an 8/10, but for me in 2023 it is a 6.5/10.

BONUS ROUND

Unrelated to the movie itself here is a couple of things I learned from seeing it. First of all I now understand where the phrase “Gods and Monsters” comes from. This is what James Gunn is calling his first phase of his DCU, it sounded familiar but didn’t realize it was from Bride of Frankenstein. I doubt there is any deeper meaning to that choice, but it shows Gunn likes his Monster Movies anyway (No shock for someone that broke through making horror comedies).

Secondly, after seeing the Bride hiss at Frankenstein in revulsion at the end of the movie I now understand that Jeanne Arnold “Grace Munster” repeatedly hissing at Herman in “Munster, Go Home!” was actually a pretty funny reference to this movie (Given she was literally hissing at Frankenstein’s Monster). At the time it just seemed weird but fitting the films tone, now it scores some bonus points. Well played Munsters, well played.